Labor Force: More Musings

When the subject of male and female participation in the workforce arises, demographics tend to be ignored. Thus it turns out that participation in the workforce tends to be understated for women and overstated for men. What do I mean?

Females naturally outnumber men, but the workforce numbers are percentages of men or of women in the workforce calculated separately. In 2010, for instance, 61.99 million men were in the 25-54 age range, and 55.33 million were in the workforce; this produces the 89.3 percent male workforce participation. In that same year, the female population of the same age was 63.31 million, those in the workforce 47.61 million, and the rate was 75.2 percent participation. But if we ask, instead, how many men were in the workforce for every woman, the answer turns out that for every 10 men, 9 women labored alongside. Another way to put it is that 53.7 percent of the actual workforce at age 25-54 (102.9 million) was male, and 46.3 percent was female. In 1950 for ever 10 men at work only 4 women were required to make a go of things collectively.

What strikes me here is that that the natural (birth-based) proportion of males and females is 49 and 51 percent respectively. In 2010, both sexes were within 4.7 percent of their natural share, males 4.7 above, females 4.7 percent below. Very interesting datum! The bars are converging, folks!

Now it is said, nostalgically by some, that in the good-old-days (by which they must mean the 1950s) a man could make a living for his family all by himself. That’s obviously not statistically true if we believe Census and Bureau of Labor Statistics figures. But the 1950 proportions at least lean in that direction. We know well from history that some women always have had to fend for themselves, hence we have the word “spinster,” which once meant a woman who, without a husband, supported herself by spinning.

The by-gone ideal used to be never to labor for wages—but on your own land. But if laboring had to be done, it had best be done by the male, in dire circumstances by the woman, in the absolutely worst case by the children. From this I construct a hierarchy of economic degradation: self-supporting, wage-laboring, female-laboring, child-laboring. My bar graph therefore indicates the middle ground here somewhere, heading downward. But that’s industrialization, isn’t it?

It’s very striking that our economy absolutely demands—what with that 10:9 ratio—that women be out there working. A tiny handful, of course, are executive vice presidents, etc., but the great bulk actually labor rather than kicking ass.

It is a marvel and a mystery that in the name of wealth we’ve managed to work ourselves, pun intended, into a situation where females have no choice but to labor so that, in their ample free time, they can enjoy the great wealth of products and services that spell freedom from labor. And never mind that far too many can’t actually enjoy that wealth, because that little extra women used to go to work to earn has become necessity. And never mind that, now, now that they are working, men no longer cleave to them—so that the single-parent household, overwhelmingly female-headed, is one of the fastest-growing household categories. There were 10.6 million such households in 2007, growing at 2.1 percent a year since 1980, versus population growth in that same period of 1 percent. They held 28.8 percent of all households with children in 2007. Astounding. And, by the way, there is something we can all do. The traditional action is to take care of one’s own when the culture’s mindless axe descends.

Men, Women in the Labor Force

A recent column by David Brooks commenting on the decline in male participation in the labor force led me to look up the trends and the latest data on this ever-intriguing subject. Let me begin with a summary graphic from an article in the Monthly Labor Review, October 2006. It charts trends nicely from 1948 forward. The article is available here.

What it shows is that, indeed, the Bureau of Labor Statistics agrees with David Brooks. As a percent of the labor force, men are losing share of total jobs. In 1948 96.6 percent of all men aged 25 to 54 were working; in 2005 the number had declined to 90.5 percent. Corresponding figures for women were 35 percent in 1948 and 75.3 percent in 2005. Also intriguing is the fact that the elderly—55 and older—while having reached an all-time low in participation in 1995 (30%) were, in 2005, heading back up (37.2%) and almost as high as they had been in 1948 (43.3%). The chart also serves as a reminder that economic down-turns are a rather recurring pattern in our free-wheeling economy.

The next graphic updates this series using BLS data from here. I’m showing the numbers, at 5-year intervals, from 1950 to 2010. What I find striking here is that everybody’s participation has dropped thanks to the Great Recession. But while men went down 1.2 percent (from 90.5 to 89.3), women only lost 0.1 percent (going from 75.3 to 75.2). In the workforce, women are always retained longer than men. But the fault for this lies with men: they ought to insist that women be paid the same as men for all equivalent work! They aren’t. Therefore, good-bye!

These are not exactly demographic trends, which have the character of fate; but they do show broad social and economic trends worthy of a few minutes of contemplation. The contrast between 37 and 75 percent of women working outside the home (1948, 2010) surely has an effect on child-raising. The effect would seem minimal once women are into their late thirties, but earlier? In 2010 68.3 percent of women 20-24 and 74.7 percent of women 25-34 were working—ages when their children were toddlers up to teenagers. Does that affect society? The economic situation is also shown when we contemplate that 31.5 percent of both sexes aged 65-69 were still at work—and an amazingly high 18 percent of those aged 70-74! And there is also something here, though difficult to ferret out, that says something about the male’s conception of his role in society. But the less said, perhaps, the better…